Features » February 5, 2004

State of the Asylum

By Kurt Vonnegut

Editor’s note On the afternoon of Tuesday, January 20, In These Times received a fax:

ON ORANGE ALERT HERE. ECONIMIC TERRORIST ATTACK EXPECTED AT 8 PM EST. KV

Worried, we called Kurt Vonnegut. What did he know?! He said he would tell us when he had more complete information. The next morning we received another fax, a transcript of a conversation he had, he said, with the out-of-print science fiction writer Kilgore Trout.

TROUT Did you watch the State of the Union address?

KV Yes, and it certainly helped to remember what the late British philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell called this planet.

TROUT Which was?

KV “The lunatic asylum of the Universe.” He said the inmates had taken over and were trashing the joint. And he wasn’t talking about the germs or the elephants. He meant we the people.

TROUT There was certainly nothing in our president’s behavior to match Howard Dean’s tarantella after he placed third in Iowa.

KV That was straitjacket and padded cell stuff. I’m glad he put on such a show, since it dramatized a fatal flaw in our Constitution.

TROUT Which is?

KV Only a nut would run for president. As far as that goes, only disturbed people ran for president of my class in high school. My point is that doing a Dean isn’t the only way to show how disconnected you are from what is really going on.

TROUT For example?

KV I’m in New York City, where they mainstream the clinically insane, turn ’em loose on the streets. There could be a little old lady on Times Square, crooning in subzero weather, crooning to nobody in particular about all she has done to make this a better country, safer, better educated, more prosperous and so on. She believes it with all her heart, but it isn’t true.

TROUT And?

KV I only want to say about our president, our armed forces’ Commander-in-Chief: He believes whatever he says. He might be the sincerest person in the whole wide world. He should be in a movie. Correction: He is in a movie, a made-for-TV movie, which is now our form of government.

TROUT You don’t feel that his tax cuts have staved off a depression?

KV Staved it off? Arnold Schwarzenegger’s California is ganz gebusted.

TROUT “Ganz gebusted?”

KV German for “broke,” unable to pay for even the most basic public services. Governor Schwarzenegger, whom I met when he was nothing but “Mr. Universe,” now thinks he can sell bonds for the next generation to pay off. Hasta la vista, Baby. And every state and municipality in America is ganz gebusted. You think Baghdad is a mess? Wait till you see Kokomo, Indiana, two years from now.

TROUT What about President Bush’s statement that he gave a tax cut to the rich because they could make wiser use of it than the government ever could?

KV

TROUT That’s all?

KV He told the truth! Even a stopped clock tells the truth once every 12 hours. Who couldn’t make better use of money? Would you just look what the federal government has done with the billions and billions of public money we used to have in our treasury? This administration has squandered it all, and then some, on Rube Goldberg devices for protecting us from—or blowing the crap out of—Arabs, most of whom could never attack us even if they wanted to. It was Saudis who knocked down the Twin Towers. Anybody notice that? And we act as though the Saudis are as pure as the Virgin Mary.

TROUT Thank you. I think that’s enough for now. You look as though you’re about to do a Dean.

KV This war is making billionaires out of millionaires, and trillionaires out of billionaires, and they own television, and they bankroll George Bush, and not because he’s against gay marriage.

TROUT Yes, well, do get some rest, or maybe take a swim, a total change of environment.

KV You want to hear about a really crazy guy?

TROUT OK.

KV Napoleon! He was so crazy he thought he was Napoleon! But what made his case so unfunny, in fact catastrophic, was that he, unlike the little old lady on Times Square, held real power! He was already, and no kidding, Emperor! So, as a consequence of his delusion, there would be absolutely genuine screams of agony and blood and guts all over the place—for years to come.

TROUT OK.

KV You don’t think this is the Lunatic Asylum of the Universe?

TROUT I don’t think I expressed an opinion one way or the other.

KV We are killing this planet as a life-support system with the poisons from all the thermodynamic whoopee we’re making with atomic energy and fossil fuels, and everybody knows it, and practically nobody cares. This is how crazy we are. I think the planet’s immune system is trying to get rid of us with AIDS and new strains of flu and tuberculosis, and so on, but I think it’s too late. I don’t think even it can keep George W. Bush from getting elected to a second term.

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• Reader Comments

  “Doing a Dean”?  Fuck you.  How is reeling off a list of states equate with a “rant” or “rage”?  It’s not like he said,“The fucking Clinton Dems, and the corp-owned Media, and the RNC are scared shitless of me as Prez!”  Which would have been true.  Have you heard the Dean speech w/o the background noise filtered out? Aren’t you cute with your smartass “Doing a Dean.”  Wait ‘til Kerry gets the nom and Nader steps in and, wham!, 4 more years of Bush.  Then you’ll be wishing you hadn’t shit on Dean.  Asshole.

  Posted by Chris Dodson on Feb 5, 2004 at 7:48 PM

  Wow, top post just missed the entire point.  That was. . . interesting.

  But as an aside to it [since we’re all just inmates anyways]: if Nader’s own people don’t straightjacket him to keep him from being another and getting Bush elected, they’re nuts. Bush got elected, the nation is really screwed, point made. We don’t need another spoiler this time around to prove a point. Most people get it and got it last time! Of course, when the polling machines are as reliable as Vegas slot machines we’re screwed anyways.

  4 more years of Bush would be catastrophic. Kurt is right about most things, but I disagree one one: most people really DO care. But newsflash: when you’re working 50-80 hours a week, so is your spouse, trying to keep your kids off of MTV and still you’re broke despite a college degree, it’s a pretty exhausting propositon to change the world at 10pm when you finally get to sit down for the first time in the day. Then you wake up at 5 or 6am and do it all over again. Again and again and again. With all due respect, being a semi-retired author is a different lifestyle than the rat race.

  That’s Bush & Co’s real secret weapon: mass media, mass control, and every year “labor-unit gains in productivity” which means you and I work harder for less. 6% this year, but my wages didn’t go up 6% - of course, my housing costs went up 20% and my gas did too, just like last year and the year before. . .

  But Kurt, keep up the rants. For those in the trenches of the concrete jungle, sometimes that’s exactly what is needed to keep going. We can always rage against the machine, you never know when the critical mass will happen. Look at the former Soviet Union.

  Posted by Ed Mellon on Feb 5, 2004 at 8:07 PM

  I was going to point out what Chris Dodson did about the background noise, but I don’t think Vonnegut was really attacking Dean here.

  Unfortunately, cute though this was, it leaves me still hungry for something real.

  Posted by Judy Lautner on Feb 5, 2004 at 8:07 PM

  I don’t mean to hijack the conversation, but are people still ranting about Nader stealing the election of 2000?

  Posted by greg on Feb 5, 2004 at 8:54 PM

  I’m with Ed in that I am waiting on the critical mass and do admit that having something to identify with at times has kept me going or eased a full body tension that I’m sure is taking years off my life. But, after a point I feel like the people who read this are all people who generally agree and wind up yelling at each other out of frustration. This is where I am turning to you Kurt. Isn’t it time that the well known dissenting voices embraced an evolution in their roles in this society. Rants are good (and wonderfully entertaining)-but let’s step it up a notch! Help us organize get on board, comment together and actually make some change that isn’t lip service. I am one of the many people in need of a blocker to follow through the line. I understand if this doesn’t jive with what you perceive to be your role, and maybe I’ll come off as a lazy terd who should lead instead of follow, but I think my feelings are very indicative of a genuine need.

  Posted by Colby Mischefsky on Feb 5, 2004 at 9:10 PM

• extended discussion >>>Continued...

  Discussions with more than 5 comments are continued on our special discussion page to encourage continuity and ease of use. There are currently 77 posts.

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